Teaching Excellence Awards

Year Awarded: 2014

Pamela Barton Roush

College of Business Administration

Accounting

My philosophy is to inspire students to want to learn by providing interesting, challenging and fair learning opportunities. The university classroom should be a forum for discussion to promote critical thinking and communication through the blending of concepts and reality. Students should experience the analysis, synthesis and evaluation process required for problem solving. I also believe they should be led to contemplate the ethical consequences of their choices. That is why I encourage classroom discussion and use multiple real life situations through case work and homework assignments.

I believe a teacher should guide the students through an orderly transition of learning. Considering that I teach auditing, I first cover the technical aspects and then encourage the development of interpretive skills that have an ethical dimension. I avoid stressing technical knowledge at the expense of higher levels of learning by covering technical knowledge not as an end to itself, but as a means to help students recognize, analyze, evaluate and propose potential solutions to problems.

Because most of my students will never practice auditing, I teach within a historical context that demonstrates how auditing has evolved in its fiduciary responsibility to the investing public. I put auditing in a broader context of evidence theory and risk assessment to enable the students to go beyond the mere application of audit standards.

I strongly believe the classroom environment should be open and friendly, yet structured enough to guide students through their learning process. The professor should be a positive aspect of this process and should not ignore the human element of teaching. As the "expert" I believe it is my responsibility to be prepared, organized and interesting.

Students often respond better when they feel cared for and believed in. Every semester I emphasize the importance of each student as well as the benefits of attending class, keeping up with assignments, and ongoing communication with me, the instructor. We work as a team, I encourage one-on-one meetings for additional guidance, and I assure them that although audit is a difficult course, they can pass the class with good grades if they put in the time and effort. I allow ample time for assignments and give hard, but fair exams. I spend a great deal of time on writing assignments to give students the necessary feedback for improvement. I believe I am ethically responsible for how I treat my students. Therefore, I try to be courteous in all my interactions with my students.